The government's role will be limited to playing the facilitator and releasing the 40 per cent subsidy it provides for all SEZs. Industry and service sectors will get developed plots on long lease, farmers can continue to live in the village and, in fact, hope to benefit from the SEZ itself. A section of the land is reserved for native villagers with professional expertise and skills to set up shop. "This is not just about locals getting reservations in jobs ...like in other SEZs," says Bhor. "We have enough Avasari people who'll set up industry, cargo terminals, spare-part manufacturing units. They have the first right on the developed land." Adds Bajirao Shinde, deputy sarpanch: "We will all be stakeholders. Everyone here will be a farmer-industrialist."

Avasari has a total land outlay of 6,252 acres, of which 40 per cent is under cultivation and living/grazing area.

Only a fraction of the 18,000 villagers still opposes the SEZ idea. The government says it'd give the venture all the push.

The rest, largely vacant, would have tempted any SEZ developer. Instead of living in anxiety about an outsider buying their land, Bhor asked villagers if they could re-use it to set up an SEZ of their own. Of the 18,000 villagers, only a fraction still believes the SEZ is not a great idea; the large majority fully supports it.

Initially, Bhor and his team faced opposition to the idea. But the comprehensive nature of the plan and Bhor's impeccable track record as a farmer, an industrialist--he owns Bhor Rubber Products--and a politician eventually convinced the villagers. An associate of socialist leaders Jayaprakash Narayan and S.M.

     Joshi, Bhor has been affiliated to the Congress for decades. As his SEZ idea led to a political divide in the village, Bhor worked around it and told villagers that if they wouldn't join, he and his siblings would create an IT-based SEZ on the 15 acres they own. In June last year, the Avasari

Khurd gram sabha gave the consent and the gram panchayat adopted a resolution to set up the SEZ. It had to be annulled last week because the law does not allow a gram panchayat to undertake such activities. Then, the process of launching and registering a company began. Bhor had valued the land last April at Rs 1.25 lakh per acre. Within months, as the SEZ plan took shape and promoters began to show interest, prices shot up to Rs 9 lakh an acre. The plan now: land will be valued at Rs 25 lakh an acre, the Avasari Khurd Industrial Development Pvt Ltd will take over the land, farmers will be issued share certificates according to the acreage they hand over to the company which will then develop it, and the 150-odd landless villagers will be given shares for a nominal cash capital. Post-development, the land price is expected to touch Rs 2 crore an acre.

"There is clear profit in setting up an SEZ, that's why the biggest industrialists are doing it. Why shouldn't farmers take the profit themselves?" asks Bhor. The total outlay of the project is Rs 18,000 crore, a sum that many farmers don't even comprehend. But Bhor and his team have a plan in place. If you factor in the land, the company assets will be in the region of Rs 1,000 crore. "With this, we can easily raise bank loans for initial development, then lease out parts of the SEZ and raise more money. There's government subsidy as well," says Bhor.

Of the 3,557 acres, about a thousand will be set aside for residential complexes, roads, markets/malls, gardens and so on. About 2,500 acres will have automobile, engineering, electronic and IT, pharmaceutical, chemical, biotech, horticulture and agro-based units, as well as warehouses and transport hubs. The detailed layout has been readied.

"The Avasari Khurd proposal looks promising, we await the papers," a Union commerce ministry official told Outlook. Economists from the Pune University believe this is a pathbreaking concept that could impact the very concept of SEZs in the country. Already, enthused by the Avasari progress, villagers of Navale, also near Pune, have decided to set up a meat export SEZ. Villagers of Akrole in Nashik district are looking to replicate Avasari for an export-oriented wine SEZ. "My understanding is that India is already yoked to the world economy. Indian and foreign companies have swallowed the small-scale sector, and SEZs threaten farmers," says Bhor. "It follows that farmers stand to gain if they become real stakeholders and shareholders in SEZs. Ultimately, as a farmer, I don't want to give up ancestral land but I can put it to modern, perhaps more beneficial, use." A contagion all would welcome.